• The "designer dog house" that Paris Hilton had built recently—which is equipped with chandeliers and air-conditioning—cost her $325K, or considerably more than what most Americans spends on human homes. [Luxist]
• Rosie O'Donnell and her partner Kelli Carpenter-O'Donnell are not splitting up, you'll undoubtedly be relieved to hear. [People]
• Kristin Davis of Sex and the City fame has found herself caught up in a dispute over Middle Eastern politics. You didn't expect to hear that, did you? [P6]
• Did MSNBC's Keith Olbermann use some pull to snag his girlfriend a job working as a reporter for WNBC? It wouldn't be the first time! [P6]

• The September issue of Harper's Bazaar features Susan Boyle in her first-ever fashion shoot. More importantly, Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester, who appears on the cover of the issue, shoots down the recent rumors that she took part in a sex tape. [Harper's Bazaar, Us]
• Rodarte's Laura and Kate Mulleavy will be designing a line for Target as part of its Go International series. Sweet. [WWD]
• Roberto Cavalli appears to have changed his mind for about the 20th time and decided against selling a stake in his company. [Reuters]

• Sam Sifton, the Times' new restaurant critic, answers a couple of questions about his new gig over on Diner's Journal. Meanwhile, Grub Street and The Feedbag sound off on how food criticism has changed over the past few years.
• The 24 stars that Frank Bruni reclaimed during his five-year tenure. [Eater]
• Douglas Rodriguez has parted ways with Nuela, which opens this fall. [NYT]
• Gabriel Stulman's new spot, Joseph Leonard, opens this eve. [Eater]
• The critics: In his third-to-last review, Frank Bruni downgrades Danny Meyer's Union Square Cafe from three stars to two; the Daily News' Danyelle Freeman is more impressed with the drinks at Hotel Griffou than she is with the food; TONY's Jay Cheshes gives SHO Shaun Hergatt three out of five stars; the Post's Steve Cuozzo tears Harbour apart; and Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton heads out to Nick & Toni's and decides the best thing about it "is the parking lot."

It was super-sketchy Hollywood producer Steve Bing who provided the jet that Bill Clinton used so he could go on his rescue mission to North Korea. If only Bing's Boeing could talk. Not only has the plane reportedly served as the setting for various escapades over the years involving lots of babes and other nefarious creatures like Ron Burkle, it may have also been the mode of transportation for a "secret research trip" to Cuba last week, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Sadly, the paper couldn't pin down Bing's involvement in the voyage to a second rogue nation in less than two weeks: "A receptionist at his Shangri-La Entertainment production company Wednesday denied ever hearing of Bing." Well played, young lady, well played. [THR, ABC News]

Rush Limbaugh can't seem to bring himself to leave New York City, as he's promised on several occasions over the past year. But he is disappearing ever so slowly. The right-wing demagogue has lost 80 pounds over the past few months thanks to some sort of diet called "Quick Weight Loss," bringing him down from 300 pounds to a svelte 210. At that rate, you can look forward to him vanishing entirely sometime before the end of 2009. [Page2Live, previously]

If you recently lost your art or design-related job, the folks at Time Out New York has some extremely useful advice to share with you about transitioning to a new field. Instead of doing something that actually involves a small measure of creativity on your part, how about becoming a "corporate presentation specialist" and taking a job with a bank, so you can spend your days designing PowerPoint presentations for ungrateful investment bankers? Sounds like fun, doesn't it? (And pay no mind to the fact that many banks now outsource this task to people in India who make $2 an hour.)

Cityfile has partnered with Dr. Helen Fisher to bring you the latest insight into love and romantic attraction. A renowned biological anthropologist, Dr. Fisher has conducted extensive research in the fields of human sexuality, love and marriage. She serves as Chief Scientific Advisor for the internet dating site Chemistry.com.

• NBC is pulling out all the stops to promote Jay Leno's new show. Don't believe it? Try this out for size: "In early September, NBC will even adopt a portion of Interstate 10 in California to reiterate Mr. Leno's time slot." [NYT]
• Notwithstanding the Leno blitz, NBC is still looking to cut its budget. [NYT]
• No one cares about CNBC these days, in case you haven't noticed. [Slate]
• More on troubles at Condé Nast (revenues may fall by as much as $350 million this year), and the recent round of receptionist-purging. [NYP, NYO]
• The lobbyist scandal goes on. A couple of days after it was revealed that MSNBC's Richard Wolffe is now working for a lobbying firm comes the news that CNN's Bill Schneider has signed up with a D.C. think tank. [HuffPo]
• Related: Wolffe has another Obama-related book in the works. [TNR]
• Experts say the prognosis for BusinessWeek is not good. [DailyFinance]
• As you might expect, the mood has been very upbeat at CurrentTV today now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee have returned from North Korea. [NYT]

How many members of the Ronson clan are now in the business of selling sneakers? If you guessed more than one, congrats—you win. Gucci has tapped Mark Ronson to design a line of kicks called "Gucci Ronsons," which will debut when a bunch of "sneakers-only pop-up shops" open up this fall.

Sarah Palin is in New York, have you heard? She's supposedly in town to meet with HarperCollins about the book she's supposed to write (and which you're dying to read, of course). But she threw everyone through a bit of a loop by dining at Michael's yesterday, power center of the media elite and hardly a venue known for attracting people who go hunting and fishing and are married to champion snowmobile racers. Not that there was any chance she run into the likes of Barry Diller or Tina Brown. She went there for dinner. [Gawker]

Ever hear of the Nicholas Roerich Museum? It's located on the Upper West Side. A tourist attraction it is not: The museum says it gets just 25 visitors a day. And yet "brazen art thieves" have hit the museum in two separate heists in recent weeks. Call us misguided, but "brazen" is storming into the Met with a dozen machine gun-toting friends and pulling a bunch of Van Goghs from the walls. This just suggests that New York City's art thieves have gotten lazy. Or maybe they've been busy transitioning to the booming business of bank robberies? [NYP]

The New York Times has finally picked someone to replace Frank Bruni as the newspaper's restaurant critic. Sam Sifton, the Times' culture editor and a former editor of the Dining section, will take over the job in October. In the meantime, he'll spend the next few months recuperating from the extensive plastic surgery that will be required to totally change his appearance, thus rendering the many photos of him on the Internet totally obsolete. [NYO]

As if former Lehman chief Dick Fuld wasn't enough of a villain as it is given his role in the investment bank's collapse last fall, it turns out he was a tax cheat, too. The Times reports today that the Bloomberg administration is accusing Lehman of failing to pay the city some $627 million in taxes between 1996 and 2008.

It's been a year and a half since John Schaefer was ousted as the chef at Irving Mill, the new American restaurant located near Union Square. (Schaefer was replaced by Ryan Skeen, the rising star who's since left Irving Mill himself and is now running things at Allen & Delancey.) But Schaefer's stint at Irving Mill is now the subject of a contentious, messy dispute between the former Gramercy Tavern executive chef and Irving Mill's owners, Suzanne, Mario, and Sergio Riva.

Model Agyness Deyn riding her bike in Brooklyn ... Kanye West walking in SoHo ... Sienna Miller getting in an SUV outside the Gramercy Park hotel ... Jennifer Aniston walking under an umbrella on the set of The Bounty downtown ... Rihanna shopping in SoHo, and later leaving a recording studio ... Jay-Z filming a commercial in DUMBO ... Vanessa Hudgens checking her phone, and later walking into a store ... Michelle Rodriguez shopping in the meatpacking district ... Marlon Wayans leaving the Gramercy Park hotel ... James Franco and Julia Roberts shooting scenes for Eat, Pray, Love in the Village ... Ray Liotta shopping with his girlfriend in SoHo ... Rachel Nichols leaving her hotel in Midtown ... and America Ferrera sitting down on the set of Ugly Betty in Gramercy Park.

• Pro golfer Vijay Singh and his wife, Ardena Seth, are paying $5.675 million for a penthouse duplex at 55 West 59th Street. The 3,369-square-foot pad was listed in June for $6.9 million. [Real Deal]
• Joan Raines has closed on the sale of her late mother's townhouse at 5 East 78th Street, albeit for a lot less than the $23.5 million she'd been seeking last year. The 13,095-square-foot Barclay Mansion, which had been dropped down to $18.5 million before going into contract in June, sold for $15 million to a limited liability corporation registered to the same address as the Blue Note Jazz Club in the Village. [NYO]
• Apparel mogul Jason Rabin and his wife Nicole have cut the price of their duplex at 850 Park Avenue for the second time since putting it up for sale for $9.9 million in February. The 5,600-square-foot pad, which the couple bought last August, is listed for $7.9 million with Carrie Chiang. [Cityfile, Corcoran]
• Tunde Folawiyo, the son of a Nigerian tycoon, has paid a combined $10.1 million for three condos in the Centurion at 33 West 56th Street. [NYO]

Goldman Sachs has been accused in recent weeks of plotting to make a fortune from the collapse of the American economy and then plotting with Washington insiders to hand the banking industry a massive bailout. Are Goldman haters now plotting against the firm's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, and his wife Laura? A day after it was reported the banking chief had instructed Goldman employees to play it cool comes this doozy about Laura Blankfein's alleged antics in the Hamptons last weekend:

The scariest woman in New York, Jocelyne Wildenstein, turns 69 today. Let's hope she doesn't mark the occasion by paying another visit to her plastic surgeon. Retired astronaut Neil Armstrong is turning 79 today. Retired basketball player Patrick Ewing turns 47. DJ Funkmaster Flex is 41. Actress Loni Anderson is turning 63. High-end Manhattan real estate broker Edward Lee Cave is 70. Adam Yauch, one of the founding members of The Beastie Boys, is turning 44. The Brady Bunch's Maureen McCormick is 53. And Dawn Richard of Danity Kane celebrates her 26th birthday today.

• Madonna is taking her kids on the best summer vacation ever later this month: She's thinking about taking them to visit Auschwitz, so "they can learn about mistakes made in the past." If that doesn't pan out, she could always just invite Sean Penn and Guy Ritchie over for a visit and teach them the same lesson, couldn't she? [YNET]
• Paula Abdul announced over Twitter last night that she's leaving American Idol. True? Was she just drinking again? We'll find out soon enough. [NYDN]
• Hopeless romantic Kelly Bensimon made a move on Gerard Butler the other night, but the actor didn't reciprocate. Try your best to empathize. [NYDN]
• Great news: Ratings for Jon & Kate Plus 8 have tanked since the show came back from hiatus. Say a little prayer that this continues. [Us]
• Nominations for the MTV Video Music Awards were announced yesterday; Beyoncé and Lady Gaga came out on top, each earning nine nods. [THR]

• Vanity Fair's rather dubious "International Best-Dressed List" is now online. Take a few minutes to browse through the slideshow to see the obvious picks, close personal friends of Graydon Carter, Condé Nast employees, precious Vanity Fair advertisers, as well as a few exciting new entrants such as Michael Bloomberg, who, as you can see above, always dresses to impress. [VF]